Tag Archives: Aurin Chowdhury

Elections 2025: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 12

Posted on by
2

The tl;dr here is to vote for Aurin Chowdhury; I door-knocked for her in 2023 and I have had no regrets about my support.

On the ballot:

Aurin Chowdhury
Becka Thompson
Edward Bear Stops

Edward Bear Stops

Edward Bear Stops is a 24-year-old whose website looks progressive and inoffensive but who gets weirder the more you look. His campaign Twitter bio describes him as the “President and Founder of SoulFull.” SoulFull is a nonprofit where the first page shows you that they have an official certificate of nonprofit incorporation and the Team page has a picture of Edward looking very devout. They do seem to do something useful, unlike a lot of nonprofits founded by fringe candidates: they hand out free sandwiches on alternate Saturdays. SoulFull’s Instagram has a lot of photos of the sandwiches.

He also has a YouTube channel. I don’t have the patience to sit through long videos of people talking about God when I’m trying to suss out their political beliefs but I got pretty strong “my career goal is Cult Leader” vibes, and also somewhere in my deep dive I found his Facebook, which has campaign stuff recently but religious stuff in the recent past and the further down you scroll, the clearer it is that he believes himself to be a prophet and on an entirely literal mission from God.

I wish him luck with his nonprofit, I would encourage him to NOT start a cult, and I don’t think anyone should vote for him.

Becka Thompson

Becka Thompson is currently serving on the Park Board and is in my opinion the single worst person currently holding public office in Minneapolis.

I’m going to start by talking about her racism. In March, ahead of the DFL endorsing convention, she objected to the idea that “MAGA has no place in Minneapolis.” In May, she wrote in a campaign e-mail that she might not have “the desired amount of melanin” and then backed down and apologized. Then in July, she referred to Ward 10 City Council rep Aisha Chughtai as “a nice, young, you know — ethnic woman” in a campaign video and then had to apologize again.

And honestly, this isn’t new! Back when she was running for Park Board in 2021, I was really appalled by what I found, which included her complaining that the police officers who aided and abetted Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd were “overcharged.” Elsewhere on her blog she described the murder of George Floyd as follows: “What transpired later was that the man in the car ended up dead and four police officers ended up in jail.”

Moving on to other things I do not like! She also sued John Edwards (of WedgeLive) and Taylor Dahlin (a WedgeLive associate) over a website they had nothing to do with that was also very very clearly satire. (You can see an archive of it if you want. But also, it says she’s running to represent Ward 14. There isn’t a Ward 14. It’s clearly a joke.) When this got tossed she filed multiple other lawsuits, all similarly frivolous. This was an abuse of the legal system to suppress criticism, and the sort of bullshit I expect from Trump and his cultists, not a supposed Democrat in the city of Minneapolis. It is legal to make fun of politicians! And to criticize them!

Next issue. She doesn’t actually live in Ward 12. She currently holds a Park Board seat in North Minneapolis. That’s legal, so long as she moves by early October. She posted in late July saying that she was about to “start the process of moving in” with her uncle, a resident of Ward 12. (Hopefully by early October she will also resign from the Park Board.) While on the Park Board she’s used data requests and an alias to dig up information on colleagues, according to one of those colleagues.

In terms of policies she says she wants, she’s basically toeing the Minneapolis conservative line: she wants more cops, lower taxes, and to get rid of the 2040 plan. She’s opposed to living wages for workers.

But you know what, even if you’re conservative, you should consider that Becka, if elected, will make your side look really really really really really really bad. She will say racist stuff that will make people say “oh. is that YOUR City Councillor? I’m sorry!” She will post weird videos and spread conspiracy theories. Even if you like her politics better than Aurin’s, don’t vote for Becka!

Aurin Chowdhury

Aurin has only been on the City Council for about a year and a half. I think she’s done good work so far. Her accomplishment list shows her as someone who has both centered her work on progressive values and sought pragmatic solutions to problems. Her more centrist colleague Emily Koski has endorsed her, describing her as a “bridge-builder.”

I would, without a moment of hesitation, vote for Aurin Chowdhury for Minneapolis City Council. I would not rank either of the other candidates.

I have a new book coming out next June! This one is not YA; it’s a near-future thriller about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on site to deliver babies. You can pre-order it right now if you want.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi but instead encourage people who want to reward all my hard work to donate to fundraisers. This year I’m fundraising for YouthLink. YouthLink is a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps youth (ages 16-24) who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. (Here’s their website.) I have seen some of the work they do and been really impressed. (An early donor to the fundraiser added a comment: “YouthLink was incredible instrumental in my assistance of a friend to escape a bad family situation in Florida with little more than a computer and a state ID. Thanks to YouthLink and their knowledge of resources my friend was able to get a mailing address (which was essential in getting a debit card and formal identification documents), healthcare, hot meals, an internship at a local company, and even furniture for their new apartment.” — That is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about!)

I set up a fundraiser with a specific goal mainly because seeing the money raised helps motivate me. (Having external motivation helps. This is a ton of work and 2025 is a dumpster fire.)

Elections 2023: Minneapolis City Council, Ward 12

Posted on by
6

The tl;dr here is to vote for Aurin Chowdhury but this is going to be a pretty long post because one of her opponents is presenting himself on his website as a lot more progressive than he is in any other context.

On the ballot:

Aurin Chowdhury
Luther Ranheim
Nancy Ford

Nancy Ford

Nancy is on the ballot as a DFLer but was quoted in an ad for the utterly reprehensible Shawn Holster calling him a “pragmatist, not an activist.” (Holster ran against Zaynab Mohamed last year and is a 3%er with a Twitter feed full of transphobia.) Nancy ran in 2021 and when asked about rent control responded by talking about how much she resented having to pay the minimum wage: “I was a property owner. I wouldn’t want to have government come in and tell me how to manage my property. I’m unhappy enough with them telling me what I have to pay my employees and x, y and z.”

I would not rank Nancy, and Luther’s willingness to actively campaign with her (Luther and Nancy are both encouraging their supporters to rank them 1 and 2) is at the top of a long list of reasons why his self-presentation on his website is disingenuous as hell.

Luther Ranheim

If you look just at Luther’s website, he seems less awful than you’d expect: he talks about alternatives to police response for nonviolent crimes, the People’s Climate Equity Plan (I assume he means The People’s Climate and Equity Plan from MN350), and some other progressive-sounding stuff. Here’s where the rubber meets the road, though, as Luther would say.

  1. He’s actively campaigning with Nancy Ford, friend to Republicans, and encouraging his supporters to rank her second.
  2. An April fundraiser for Luther was hosted by Jackie Cherryhomes, Steve Minn (more on Minn here), and Steve Cramer of the Downtown Council; the point of contact was (documented asshole and former campaign manager for liar Mickey Moore) Alex Minn. More recently he had a fundraiser hosted in part by Carol Becker. The people embracing Luther are among the absolute worst people in Minneapolis politics.
  3. When he thinks he’s among friends (by which I mean landlords), he will say that he thinks Minneapolis can solve its financial problems by cutting the budget for bike lanes, which ludicrous on multiple levels. The fact that he dramatically changes his stance depending on who he’s talking to should be a warning sign to literally everyone who thinks he’s an acceptable candidate.
  4. Luther is completely unambiguous on his call with the landlords that he will oppose any form of rent control or rent stabilization. Again, in other contexts, he’s all mealy-mouthed about bringing everyone together to figure out the right numbers blah blah etc. (To be fair, he was also blunt about this at the Ward 12 forum, saying that rent control is unnecessary in Minneapolis.)

Anyway, just to reiterate, Luther is conservative, his friends are terrible, and you cannot and should not trust his stance on any issue.

Aurin Chowdhury

In some wards Aurin would absolutely be the centrist option: she wants to bring up police staffing to meet the minimums required by the charter (rather than pointing out that this requirement is bullshit and should be removed from the charter), for example, and while she’s open to rent control it’s clearly with caveats (“Rent Stabilization is not the silver bullet for addressing the housing crisis but prevents predatory rent hikes which are happening now in our city and are displacing the most vulnerable in our community. I support new construction exemptions and creating a system to support small landlords in our city. I have not committed to any other feature because I want to ensure that Ward 12 residents have a voice in the policy-making process.” — I should note, I have a lot of doubts about rent control, especially as it was implemented in St. Paul, so I like her policy here more than a lot of the other people I’ve endorsed.)

Aurin’s endorsements are the polar opposite of Luther’s (the DFL, Take Action MN, and a bunch of elected officials I like). For that alone, I view her as the obvious choice. I would enthusiastically vote for Aurin Chowdhury if I lived in Ward 12. I would not rank either of the other two.

I have a book coming out this fall, in November! Liberty’s Daughter is near-future SF about a teenage girl on a libertarian seastead. A lot of it was originally published as short fiction in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can pre-order it in either book or ebook format from whatever you like.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi, so if you’d like make a donation to encourage my work, check out this first-year art teacher at Lucy Laney who is raising money to provide easels, drying racks, and art materials for her students. (Previously: a Music teacher at North High trying to replace the drum heads of the drums used by the drumline students. Funded!)